came next was vile puke spewing out of his mouth. Arvid caked his naked belly with steamy vomit chunks. The stench was devastating. I heard female divers somewhere around me scream in revulsion. The captain grabbed the on board hose and started spraying down the deck. Captains take great pride in their vessels and defacing it in anyway is like someone trying to harm a mothers baby. It’s just not a good idea. I could see the captain trying to control himself, but at the same time he was boiling inside, pissed off. The captain could no longer control his anger and he turned the hose on Arvid. Arvid jumped in wild shock from the cold water. His arms were flailing in the air as the captain sprayed the puke off his body.
“I’m sea sick,” Arvid screamed. Loud, ferocious burps and guttural noises started booming out of his body. “I think I need to go down below in the cabin. I’ll feel better.”
“No,” I said. “Jesus Arvid, get a hold of yourself. Going down below will only make it worse. And besides, if you blow chunks down there in one of the bunks, it won’t be water the captain sprays you with the next time. No, the next time he’ll spray you with gasoline and light a match to go with it.” More divers were coming aboard and I had to get back to my job. “You need to stay up here in the fresh air and fix your eyes on Bird Rock. It’ll help the motion sickness.”
“Okay. I’m sorry for all the trouble I caused,” Arvid said, looking at me with traces of puke streaming down the corners of his fat mouth.
“No trouble, but I think you should take a long look at what that hat says, the one you wear on your head.”
Arvid nodded, gave me a slight smile and turned his head back towards Bird Rock.
Let the Axe Fall, Adios “Q”
It seemed like everyone was getting canned. People that had ten, fifteen years experience were either getting booted out the door or offered a job in one of the company’s offices in Houston, Texas or Greenville, South Carolina. It had been about a year since that fat bastard puked all over himself. In that time, I earned my instructor rating and was teaching part time at Liburdi’s Scuba Center. So I was ready for the axe to fall on my head; I had an ace in the hole.
I was talking with “Q” who was visiting me in my cubicle.
“You’re really going to do it?” she said, looking at me with her soft blue eyes.
“And what are you going to be doing?” I asked. “Are you staying here or did they offer you a spot in Houston?”
“I’m staying here,” she said.
“That’s good because I hear Houston gets very hot and humid.” I was about to say something else when my phone rang. After a brief conversation, I hung up the phone.
“Was that them?” Q asked.
“Yes.”
“I could tell by the ring it was the dreaded phone call,” she said.
“Dreaded? Hell no, Q. That was the freedom call,” I said getting up from my desk.
Q smiled and said, “Are we still on for lunch?”
“Of course. I’ll pick you up at he same time,” I said.
“Okay, Pasley,” she said as she got up and walked out of my square coffin with me. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
“Eric?” A cartoonish female voice said. I was sitting in the human resources lobby looking at a Cosmopolitan magazine. I loved smelling the perfume sample pages. There were about four other employees who all had that doomsday look on their faces sitting across from me.
“Yes,” I said, putting down the magazine and looking up at the HR worker.
“Follow me please,” she squeaked. Man, despite her cartoon voice, she was a good looking girl with long legs that resembled a Barbie Doll.
In her office, she started rambling on about how the downsizing is necessary due to the fact that the offices in Texas and in the east are getting most of the job bids, and that all the overhead and California taxes are playing a part in all of it. Then she asks me about transferring.
“Transferring?”
“Yes,” Barbie Doll Legs said. “What do you think about transferring to our Houston office?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think that sounds good.”
She seemed a bit shocked at my answer. There was an eerie pause. A moment of awkward silence. Then she said, “Oh, do you have another job lined up?”
“I don’t know for sure,” I said. “But what I do know is that I got a one way ticket in my pocket to the United States Virgin Islands and I’m kissing this place goodbye.”
She looked at me in dumb muteness as I got up, smiled and walked out the door.
The Lost Puppy Divers, St. Thomas, USVI
I had a good buzz kicking in and I began to chuckle out loud. Some of the other passengers looked at me briefly then quickly turned away when I caught their eye. I was thinking about the night before the flight.
I stayed the over at my good friend Pete’s so he could take me to the airport in the morning. Pete was also an instructor and we were like twins. We both shared the same thought process and warped sense of humor that was always pushing the envelope of decency. I think this was due to our childhoods being very similar and the way we viewed life. We both dove together all the time and formed a little dive group along with our two other friends Big Paul The Boxer who knows Mickey Rourk and Little Jim. We called ourselves the Lost Puppy Divers and to be a Lost Puppy Diver meant we’d dive anywhere, anytime and in any condition. We often set up Lost Puppy Diver scuba trips.
We cracked open a few beers and talked about our first Lost Puppy Diver trip. Big Paul loaded up twelve tanks in his mini van and we took a road trip from Orange County up to Monterey. We took The Pacific Coast Highway all the way up and we would just stop at some random spot along the beach, throw our scuba gear on and go diving. “Remember when we were standing on that cliff just a little outside of San Louis Obispo checking out the water. Damn that water looked almost like the Caribbean, the “vis” looked like it was seventy feet and Big Paul says, How come there are no divers here?” I said.
“That place looked awesome,” Pete said.
“And it was a totally shitty dive. We couldn’t see shit. The fucking water was like split pea soup with ham chunks mixed in,” I said after taking a guzzle from my beer.
“And we got the hell beat out of us from all the chop, surge and current knocking us against the rocks down below. And that was after we were as exhausted as hell climbing all the way down that damn cliff, with all our gear on, sweating like boiled pigs in our quarter inch wet suits,” Pete said, almost spitting out his beer at the funny image.
“That was a fun-ass trip, “I said, “But I still can’t get over that one dive place where we tried to get our tanks filled.”
“The dive and tattoo shop?” Pete laughed.
“That’s the one. Christ, it was a dive shop with a tattoo parlor in the back. And that
